Come Fly With Me
by Starshone
Summary: Ryo is only in it for the digital world. Or is he? Because this isn't beautiful, this is destruction. Ryokato with background Jurato, onesided Jenryo if you squint hard.


The first time I see him, there's something about the goggles that strikes a chord in me. Memory, maybe. When I try to play it again, there's a note missing, the harmony incomplete. I _know_ who he reminds me of – Taichi, Daisuke, years ago – but it's only intellectual memory that serves, the Wonder Swan Color a mental replacement for living it.

Maybe he looks different – yellow goggles, hair like caramel, eyes light and red where theirs were brown shadows – but some things never change. He's innocent enough to try to make friends with Cyberdramon, and completely gone on a girl following him around the digital world. And that's what makes me hesitate. Why come between them, right?

Cyberdramon makes that choice for me, as always.

-

The first time we matrix evolve is to fight the D-Reaper's agents. Later on he asks if we'd received Dobermon's gift too, but I've never met a Dobermon. He wonders how we did it if I'm all DNA, so I tell him off-handedly that no, actually, I'm data, it's a long story so go and borrow Jen's old Wonder Swan.

What I don't tell him is _why_ we, or at least I did it. It's for the digital world. What isn't? I am tied to it like a cello string that will not break. I would die for that place.

By the time he finds something (someone) to die for even Monodramon is questioning my motives. Ten months of not having to sleep have turned us into insomniacs, and late one night in Fukuoka, he says it's a shame about Juri, implications lining the words.

Maybe my voice is a tone too sharp when I tell him that we're only here to save the world like we, like I always do.

I never really got to know Juri. But if she's saved, the light will go back into his eyes. I don't want him to be Taichi or Daisuke, I just want Takato.

-

It's only later that I realize Jen reminds me of someone too. The games tell me Osamu, but that means almost nothing now.

The only meaning is in his words, not his looks. When I tell him he looks like he's lost his best friend, he goes a little hysterical and manages to choke out between laughs that those were almost exactly _his_ first words to Takato. He sobers quickly, and tells me what Takato said about Juri: It's like something's broken, deep inside.

It's kind of funny, he says, because you could say the same thing about Takato. He always used to cry all the time. He lost Guilmon at school, he cried. Guilmon digivolved, he cried. He lost Juri...and I haven't seen him crying. He's just...empty.

-

Jen hasn't been looking hard enough. I find him crying in a stairwell later, and without thinking I go to him and wrap my arms around him. It's just to make him feel better. And it seems to be working: He leans into my embrace and gradually, his sobbing subsides. Maybe off the battlefield this is all I can do for him.

Juri simply isn't on my mind when I kiss him. I just want to make him a little happier. And with my eyes closed, I can't see his pain.

He kisses me back, though, with all the earnest incompetence of a first kiss, and it only occurs to me now that I should have left him to Juri. It's only when he goes to touch me that he pulls back, looks at the floor, and mutters that I'm too tall.

To be her, he means.

But I don't start our second kiss, or the kisses that follow.

-

Takato marks his territory with a bruise just low enough to hide with my turtleneck sweater. If Monodramon notices it when I'm undressing for bed, he doesn't comment on it.

-

When Takato isn't taking up my time and Hirokazu and Kenta aren't worshipping the ground I walk on, it's Jen trailing me like a lost puppy. He's noticed I've been hanging out with Takato a lot lately. I shrug, and say it looked like he needed the company, which _was_ true to start with.

He's been looking happier, Jen says. Thanks.

He wouldn't thank me if he knew what was going on.

-

I've always wanted to fly in the real world. Cyberdramon's a little too obvious to fly on, but now that the city's near deserted, he spends half the time itching to pick a fight with the D-Reaper and the other half as Monodramon, grounded. As Justimon, I can jump fairly high, but it's not the same as flying. Heights have never scared me.

I must have mentioned it at some point, because one day when I come looking for Takato, he isn't there, and Reika tells me he's outside with Grani. Odd name for the refurbished ark. I know my mythology, so for a moment my mental image of Takato trying to feed Grani an apple doesn't seem entirely implausible.

Actually, when I find him, he's sitting on it, hovering a good four feet above the ground, looking at his watch. I hadn't known I was late. Come with me, he says, and somewhere in the stairwell (or maybe the elevator) I've lost the ability to say no to him, so I get on board.

He touches the ark just so, and we begin to rise. I have to ask, though: I'm older, so why is _he_ driving?

I didn't see _you_ talking to the ark, he says. If it's anyone's, it's mine and Guilmon's.

He's got a point there.

It's cold this far north and this late in year, and it's colder this high above the ground. He doesn't seem to feel it. I have an arm around his waist to keep my balance as we climb, but he doesn't notice when I shiver. He just gazes at the city below us as we soar over Shinjuku. It's all very _Aladdin_, a whole new world.

It's beautiful, I say eventually, more to break the silence. I suppose it's a nice enough city.

No, he says, and I wish his voice would shake, I wish he'd get cold, anything to make him feel more human. No, it isn't beautiful, this is destruction. Before we left for the digital world Vikaramon destroyed half the city, and now the D-Reaper's taking what's left, and Juri's in there and she _hurts_. This _isn't_ beautiful.

He turns to me, grabs my collar, pulls me down to his level. He doesn't have to say _this_ is beautiful, it's written in his eyes. They're too serious, too sad. I close my eyes to block them out, and he kisses me. Later on I have to send Cyberdramon to find my sweater after it falls off Grani and the wind takes it. (I tell him I've lost it, dropped it somewhere around town, and he asks what I was doing on top of a high rise apartment building.)

This isn't beautiful. This is the closest we come to sex, fifty feet above something that wants to kill us.

-

Gray eyes sing me an elegy when I enter the protective bubble above the D-Reaper. I keep my tone teasing, my timbre light when I ask if they were planning to leave without us, but his half-hearted smile says he'd rather have done so, leaving me safe at home.

Takato doesn't even look at me after we slash the red card, focusing instead on Juri, Juri, the D-Reaper, Juri.

When Grani swoops in to lend him flight, Dukemon gives me only the briefest of glances as Takato says, come with me.

Cyberdramon notices my hesitation, I can feel it. He asks in our shared consciousness why I stand behind this child, and I tell him it's because _he's_ the leader, this is _his_ rescue mission.

Like he believes me.

When we crash through the quantum bubble, it's now or never. We're right behind Dukemon, and it's as much for him as it is for the digital world, if not more. He draws his lance, but no matter how used he is to taking the lead, I can't help wanting to protect him, leaping in front of him to clear the Bubbles that swarm ahead.

Grani is as smooth a ride when level and under attack as it is soaring through serenity. I take a moment to wonder whether anyone else has ridden the ark in this form, and come to the conclusion that it's just me, Takato, and Impmon. Hirokazu and his car metaphors can eat his heart out.

Maybe I don't have the same connection with Grani that Takato and Guilmon have, but I still cringe when the Creep Hands send us flying off it and the ark crashes too, too far away. Cyberdramon hates having to get to the D-Reaper on foot as much as I do. Dukemon and I can keep up with Saint Galgomon and Sakuyamon on the ground, but this trek still leaves too much time for the kids (they _are_ all younger than me, after all) to reminisce on how they've changed and haven't changed. I haven't known them as long as they've known each other, and can make no comment except a bit of a jibe at Ruki: She may be Queen, but she's still second to me.

Gravity can't hold Takato like it holds me. Once we're before the Reaper, he leaps into the air and doesn't fall until he's distracted by the huge hole into the digital world. I can feel it before anyone else figures out what it is. It's calling me. Then the Cable Reaper surges up from the digital world and Ruki's scared where I've never seen her scared before, and I can do nothing, not even scream something frantic and useless like Jen does when Dukemon rushes up to attack it.

I like light shows, so I like Dukemon's Final Elysian, but even I have to admit it's completely useless against this new enemy, and he falls. _Now_ it's personal. _Now_ I have to take my own shot at this. But it isn't physical or digital strength behind the scythe that assaults us, and it's too much to hold back alone.

Saint Galgomon and Sakuyamon add their own power to the fray. I keep forgetting I'm not alone now.

Then there's a shrill cry. It isn't as much personal experience with the girl as Takato's reaction that tells me it's Juri. I let him go, telling him we'll distract it while he focuses on Juri, and he leaves with thanks but without a backward glance. This is _his_ fight, I have to keep reminding myself.

It's stupid to keep watching him, and I am suitably distracted when Saint Galgomon lets out a Burst Shot and Jen yells at me to _go_, and I can't look any longer.

It takes me a moment to realize that I'm not falling back down to the ground. Maybe for those without wings, spiritual powers, or jet packs, unaided flight is the animation of love or something like it. Maybe that's how Takato could fly at the Reaper even before Grani offered them his wings, for Juri. Maybe that's how I can suddenly hover before the Cable Reaper to borrow Ruki's power, for Takato.


End file.
